Rachel McCann - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Rachel McCann

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the gr... more French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the groundwork for a revision of Cartesian ontology that has tremendous implications for architectural experience. In Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Flesh, there is no longer a human subject dispassionately manipulating a world of objects, but a reciprocal intertwining between perceiver and perceived that takes place through a continual perceptual unfolding of phenomena. Perceptual experience precedes reflection, and we generally live in an open-ended, unselfconscious state focused on motility and orientation to task. Reflection reconfigures perceptual experience, bringing it into the personal realm and overlaying it with conceptual order. In perceptual unfolding, “the real” continually manifests at each moment, replacing “what has been and portend[ing] what will be.” Thus, things‟ firm being or determinacy is not their original state, but the end toward which their unfolding tends [1]. In this dynamic unfolding, we as perceivers de-center and intertwine with the perceived world, not intellectually possessing the sensible, but rather “dispossess[ing] ourselves” as “the mind goes out to wan-der” among perceived things. To Merleau-Ponty, space is dynamic and interactive. In any environmental encounter, we are subsumed in the full-body experiences of moving, hearing, smelling, and feeling. Vision itself is trans-formed by the changing perspectives experienced through motion. Architectures spatiality and tactility exist in excess of vision, and we can examine our visual involvement with nature and architecture only when considering them engulfed within kinaesthetic and synaesthetic experience. The responsive, ever-changing lived body is in rhythmic motion with stairs, interacting with wider horizons of meaning, architectural enframement, and our grounded axial orientation in space. The aware-ness of a “body schema” operating “below self-referential intentionality” as a preconscious, sub-personal process is a cognitive perspective supporting the thoughts of Merleau-Ponty. He claims that we do not perceive a neutral orthogonal space but inhabit spaces of meaning. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of depth is a charged intertwining of perceiver and perceived, a thickening of space springing from relationship. As the three following essays illustrate, the experience and expression of depth in a phenomenological context is a key concept for the creation of a perceptually responsive architecture that immerses the body in spatial depth.

In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and e... more In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and environmental presence. Indeed, public transit often succeeds by transforming human beings into algorithms of movement and regarding their full humanity as a necessary sacrifice to efficiency. The design of transit environments often jettisons anything not instrumental to processing information about movement and orientation, including sensory engagement. Yet sensory engagement allows us to bond with a place and deepen our sense of orientation and safety.It is through the sensory capacities of our body that we get to know the world and make sense of it, according to French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who explores the links between perception and meaning at length.

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 15, 2011

Our culture is filled with entrenched and ponderous systems-of politics, philosophy, religion, ed... more Our culture is filled with entrenched and ponderous systems-of politics, philosophy, religion, education, commerce, war, science, art, and family-each one its own institution. The landscape is likewise filled with implicit expectations about gender, age, sexual orientation, appearance, and vocation-institutions sometimes less visible but no less normative. These established ways of understanding are sedimented deeply into the fabric of our lives, privileging the voices of power.

Feminist Phenomenology Futures

In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor ... more In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor of the mind as we experience and design architecture, discounting the valuable lessons of embodied experience in a rush to conceptualize and ascribe meaning to that ...

In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor ... more In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor of the mind as we experience and design architecture, discounting the valuable lessons of embodied experience in a rush to conceptualize and ascribe meaning to that ...

The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore impor... more The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore important to develop new design methods and tools that promote the understanding of the paradox of human encounters within an efficient transport environment. The prominent spatial dimension regarding the environment for public transport are not sufficiently investigated - to balance the urgent need for sustainable transport infrastructures with an appreciation of what it means to be a human in such an environment. In The United Nations climate convention, the Kyoto protocol (2005) as well as the Copenhagen protocol (2009) is stated that the greenhouse gases must be reduced in order to prevent global warming. In order to achieve this goal, travelling by public transport supports an eco-effective transport solution. Municipalities, regions and the Swedish state organs collaborate together for the vision K2020, to double the amount of journeys made by public transport. The architectonic challen...

Special 20 th-anniversary issue! his EAP is a special issue to celebrate our 20 th year of public... more Special 20 th-anniversary issue! his EAP is a special issue to celebrate our 20 th year of publication. It includes essays by four scholars who have made important contributions to environmental and architectural phenomenology. Psychologist Bernd Jager explores how the lived nature of thresholds plays an indispensable role in human inhabitation, and philosopher Karsten Harries considers architecture as it might sustain physical and spiritual shelter. In turn, philosopher Jeff Malpas refutes the criticism of place as possession-based and exclusionary, and geographer Edward Relph delineates a "pragmatic sense of place"-a style of reflection and practice that looks inward toward the uniqueness of particular places but recognizes that those places are integrally related outward to the larger-scale realm of other places and global interconnectedness. Editor David Seamon begins this special issue by discussing some key concerns readers have brought forward over the years in regard to the phenomenological efforts promoted by EAP. Below: In the very first issue of EAP, we asked whether there might be a phenomenologically-inspired graphics of places, buildings, and environmental experiences. We reprinted several illustrations, including the one here, from Mary Hufford's One Space, Many Places (Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, 1986). This work is a qualitative study of the "Pinelands," a distinct natural and cultural region of coastal New Jersey. This drawing illustrates the construction of a traditional Pinelands "crossway"-a pole road enabling woodsmen to haul cedar timber over infirm swampland. Drawing by J.

The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore impor... more The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore important to develop new design methods and tools that promote the understanding of the paradox of human encounters within an efficient transport environment. The prominent spatial dimension regarding the environment for public transport are not sufficiently investigated - to balance the urgent need for sustainable transport infrastructures with an appreciation of what it means to be a human in such an environment. In The United Nations climate convention, the Kyoto protocol (2005) as well as the Copenhagen protocol (2009) is stated that the greenhouse gases must be reduced in order to prevent global warming. In order to achieve this goal, travelling by public transport supports an eco-effective transport solution. Municipalities, regions and the Swedish state organs collaborate together for the vision K2020, to double the amount of journeys made by public transport. The architectonic challenge is to upgrade the status of space for public transport. The explorative, empirical research study TOOLBOX aims at developing a methodology for transdisciplinary communication, using one’s own body as a research tool in order to develop new design methods and tools that further the understanding of the paradox of human encounters, the need for intimate, sensorial space, within an efficient transport environment. Phenomenology offers a theoretical base for architectural design practice that considers human movement and sensory experiences (Hopsch & Cesario 2011) as well as ethical dimensions (McCann 2011), addressing issues of security, orientation, climate, and beauty in an environment that could cause alienation. This article outlines the theoretical ideas that the methodology is based on. The TOOLBOX methodology emphasizes how to design for relational space, pointing to social sustainability by designing with (spatial) care. The key concept is how one’s own bodily, sensory, experiences are being turned into a systematic, powerful design tool. Can thus a new phenomenological, architectural and bodily perspective bridge the ethical and spatial paradoxes of efficient public transport? Will we, by such a perspective, be able to implement new design methods and tools for urban planning processes that further the encounter between humans and the built environment with a deeper knowledge of spatial urban form in an embodied context?

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, 2011

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the gr... more French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the groundwork for a revision of Cartesian ontology that has tremendous implications for architectural experience. In Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Flesh, there is no longer a human subject dispassionately manipulating a world of objects, but a reciprocal intertwining between perceiver and perceived that takes place through a continual perceptual unfolding of phenomena. Perceptual experience precedes reflection, and we generally live in an open-ended, unselfconscious state focused on motility and orientation to task. Reflection reconfigures perceptual experience, bringing it into the personal realm and overlaying it with conceptual order. In perceptual unfolding, “the real” continually manifests at each moment, replacing “what has been and portend[ing] what will be.” Thus, things‟ firm being or determinacy is not their original state, but the end toward which their unfolding tends [1]. In this dynamic unfolding, we as perceivers de-center and intertwine with the perceived world, not intellectually possessing the sensible, but rather “dispossess[ing] ourselves” as “the mind goes out to wan-der” among perceived things. To Merleau-Ponty, space is dynamic and interactive. In any environmental encounter, we are subsumed in the full-body experiences of moving, hearing, smelling, and feeling. Vision itself is trans-formed by the changing perspectives experienced through motion. Architectures spatiality and tactility exist in excess of vision, and we can examine our visual involvement with nature and architecture only when considering them engulfed within kinaesthetic and synaesthetic experience. The responsive, ever-changing lived body is in rhythmic motion with stairs, interacting with wider horizons of meaning, architectural enframement, and our grounded axial orientation in space. The aware-ness of a “body schema” operating “below self-referential intentionality” as a preconscious, sub-personal process is a cognitive perspective supporting the thoughts of Merleau-Ponty. He claims that we do not perceive a neutral orthogonal space but inhabit spaces of meaning. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of depth is a charged intertwining of perceiver and perceived, a thickening of space springing from relationship. As the three following essays illustrate, the experience and expression of depth in a phenomenological context is a key concept for the creation of a perceptually responsive architecture that immerses the body in spatial depth.

It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. ... more It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. In this case, although the visual presentation will be degraded, the site should continue to be functional. We recommend using the ...

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, 2014

In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and e... more In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and environmental presence. Indeed, public transit often succeeds by transforming human beings into algorithms of movement and regarding their full humanity as a necessary sacrifice to efficiency. The design of transit environments often jettisons anything not instrumental to processing information about movement and orientation, including sensory engagement. Yet sensory engagement allows us to bond with a place and deepen our sense of orientation and safety.It is through the sensory capacities of our body that we get to know the world and make sense of it, according to French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who explores the links between perception and meaning at length.

Hypatia a Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Jun 16, 2011

This essay outlines how Western culture, and in particular the practice of architecture, has fail... more This essay outlines how Western culture, and in particular the practice of architecture, has failed to develop a nuanced and ethical approach to alterity. It examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of the flesh as a process of continual self-interrogation through perceptual acts that intertwine communality and difference, establishing a shared world through interlocution, and explores how the work of Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray augment each other to deepen our understanding of alterity. It then examines architectural design as an intercorporeal and intersubjective act that creatively refigures sedimented spatial and social habits. Using the example of an architectural design studio, it demonstrates how designers can critically confront nuances of alterity through investigating the corporeal and social depths of architecture.

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the gr... more French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the groundwork for a revision of Cartesian ontology that has tremendous implications for architectural experience. In Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Flesh, there is no longer a human subject dispassionately manipulating a world of objects, but a reciprocal intertwining between perceiver and perceived that takes place through a continual perceptual unfolding of phenomena. Perceptual experience precedes reflection, and we generally live in an open-ended, unselfconscious state focused on motility and orientation to task. Reflection reconfigures perceptual experience, bringing it into the personal realm and overlaying it with conceptual order. In perceptual unfolding, “the real” continually manifests at each moment, replacing “what has been and portend[ing] what will be.” Thus, things‟ firm being or determinacy is not their original state, but the end toward which their unfolding tends [1]. In this dynamic unfolding, we as perceivers de-center and intertwine with the perceived world, not intellectually possessing the sensible, but rather “dispossess[ing] ourselves” as “the mind goes out to wan-der” among perceived things. To Merleau-Ponty, space is dynamic and interactive. In any environmental encounter, we are subsumed in the full-body experiences of moving, hearing, smelling, and feeling. Vision itself is trans-formed by the changing perspectives experienced through motion. Architectures spatiality and tactility exist in excess of vision, and we can examine our visual involvement with nature and architecture only when considering them engulfed within kinaesthetic and synaesthetic experience. The responsive, ever-changing lived body is in rhythmic motion with stairs, interacting with wider horizons of meaning, architectural enframement, and our grounded axial orientation in space. The aware-ness of a “body schema” operating “below self-referential intentionality” as a preconscious, sub-personal process is a cognitive perspective supporting the thoughts of Merleau-Ponty. He claims that we do not perceive a neutral orthogonal space but inhabit spaces of meaning. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of depth is a charged intertwining of perceiver and perceived, a thickening of space springing from relationship. As the three following essays illustrate, the experience and expression of depth in a phenomenological context is a key concept for the creation of a perceptually responsive architecture that immerses the body in spatial depth.

In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and e... more In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and environmental presence. Indeed, public transit often succeeds by transforming human beings into algorithms of movement and regarding their full humanity as a necessary sacrifice to efficiency. The design of transit environments often jettisons anything not instrumental to processing information about movement and orientation, including sensory engagement. Yet sensory engagement allows us to bond with a place and deepen our sense of orientation and safety.It is through the sensory capacities of our body that we get to know the world and make sense of it, according to French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who explores the links between perception and meaning at length.

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 15, 2011

Our culture is filled with entrenched and ponderous systems-of politics, philosophy, religion, ed... more Our culture is filled with entrenched and ponderous systems-of politics, philosophy, religion, education, commerce, war, science, art, and family-each one its own institution. The landscape is likewise filled with implicit expectations about gender, age, sexual orientation, appearance, and vocation-institutions sometimes less visible but no less normative. These established ways of understanding are sedimented deeply into the fabric of our lives, privileging the voices of power.

Feminist Phenomenology Futures

In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor ... more In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor of the mind as we experience and design architecture, discounting the valuable lessons of embodied experience in a rush to conceptualize and ascribe meaning to that ...

In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor ... more In the technology-and information-driven modern era, we have largely abandoned the body in favor of the mind as we experience and design architecture, discounting the valuable lessons of embodied experience in a rush to conceptualize and ascribe meaning to that ...

The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore impor... more The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore important to develop new design methods and tools that promote the understanding of the paradox of human encounters within an efficient transport environment. The prominent spatial dimension regarding the environment for public transport are not sufficiently investigated - to balance the urgent need for sustainable transport infrastructures with an appreciation of what it means to be a human in such an environment. In The United Nations climate convention, the Kyoto protocol (2005) as well as the Copenhagen protocol (2009) is stated that the greenhouse gases must be reduced in order to prevent global warming. In order to achieve this goal, travelling by public transport supports an eco-effective transport solution. Municipalities, regions and the Swedish state organs collaborate together for the vision K2020, to double the amount of journeys made by public transport. The architectonic challen...

Special 20 th-anniversary issue! his EAP is a special issue to celebrate our 20 th year of public... more Special 20 th-anniversary issue! his EAP is a special issue to celebrate our 20 th year of publication. It includes essays by four scholars who have made important contributions to environmental and architectural phenomenology. Psychologist Bernd Jager explores how the lived nature of thresholds plays an indispensable role in human inhabitation, and philosopher Karsten Harries considers architecture as it might sustain physical and spiritual shelter. In turn, philosopher Jeff Malpas refutes the criticism of place as possession-based and exclusionary, and geographer Edward Relph delineates a "pragmatic sense of place"-a style of reflection and practice that looks inward toward the uniqueness of particular places but recognizes that those places are integrally related outward to the larger-scale realm of other places and global interconnectedness. Editor David Seamon begins this special issue by discussing some key concerns readers have brought forward over the years in regard to the phenomenological efforts promoted by EAP. Below: In the very first issue of EAP, we asked whether there might be a phenomenologically-inspired graphics of places, buildings, and environmental experiences. We reprinted several illustrations, including the one here, from Mary Hufford's One Space, Many Places (Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, 1986). This work is a qualitative study of the "Pinelands," a distinct natural and cultural region of coastal New Jersey. This drawing illustrates the construction of a traditional Pinelands "crossway"-a pole road enabling woodsmen to haul cedar timber over infirm swampland. Drawing by J.

The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore impor... more The development of infrastructure is a large investment project in society. It is therefore important to develop new design methods and tools that promote the understanding of the paradox of human encounters within an efficient transport environment. The prominent spatial dimension regarding the environment for public transport are not sufficiently investigated - to balance the urgent need for sustainable transport infrastructures with an appreciation of what it means to be a human in such an environment. In The United Nations climate convention, the Kyoto protocol (2005) as well as the Copenhagen protocol (2009) is stated that the greenhouse gases must be reduced in order to prevent global warming. In order to achieve this goal, travelling by public transport supports an eco-effective transport solution. Municipalities, regions and the Swedish state organs collaborate together for the vision K2020, to double the amount of journeys made by public transport. The architectonic challenge is to upgrade the status of space for public transport. The explorative, empirical research study TOOLBOX aims at developing a methodology for transdisciplinary communication, using one’s own body as a research tool in order to develop new design methods and tools that further the understanding of the paradox of human encounters, the need for intimate, sensorial space, within an efficient transport environment. Phenomenology offers a theoretical base for architectural design practice that considers human movement and sensory experiences (Hopsch & Cesario 2011) as well as ethical dimensions (McCann 2011), addressing issues of security, orientation, climate, and beauty in an environment that could cause alienation. This article outlines the theoretical ideas that the methodology is based on. The TOOLBOX methodology emphasizes how to design for relational space, pointing to social sustainability by designing with (spatial) care. The key concept is how one’s own bodily, sensory, experiences are being turned into a systematic, powerful design tool. Can thus a new phenomenological, architectural and bodily perspective bridge the ethical and spatial paradoxes of efficient public transport? Will we, by such a perspective, be able to implement new design methods and tools for urban planning processes that further the encounter between humans and the built environment with a deeper knowledge of spatial urban form in an embodied context?

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, 2011

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the gr... more French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s early work on the nature of perception laid the groundwork for a revision of Cartesian ontology that has tremendous implications for architectural experience. In Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Flesh, there is no longer a human subject dispassionately manipulating a world of objects, but a reciprocal intertwining between perceiver and perceived that takes place through a continual perceptual unfolding of phenomena. Perceptual experience precedes reflection, and we generally live in an open-ended, unselfconscious state focused on motility and orientation to task. Reflection reconfigures perceptual experience, bringing it into the personal realm and overlaying it with conceptual order. In perceptual unfolding, “the real” continually manifests at each moment, replacing “what has been and portend[ing] what will be.” Thus, things‟ firm being or determinacy is not their original state, but the end toward which their unfolding tends [1]. In this dynamic unfolding, we as perceivers de-center and intertwine with the perceived world, not intellectually possessing the sensible, but rather “dispossess[ing] ourselves” as “the mind goes out to wan-der” among perceived things. To Merleau-Ponty, space is dynamic and interactive. In any environmental encounter, we are subsumed in the full-body experiences of moving, hearing, smelling, and feeling. Vision itself is trans-formed by the changing perspectives experienced through motion. Architectures spatiality and tactility exist in excess of vision, and we can examine our visual involvement with nature and architecture only when considering them engulfed within kinaesthetic and synaesthetic experience. The responsive, ever-changing lived body is in rhythmic motion with stairs, interacting with wider horizons of meaning, architectural enframement, and our grounded axial orientation in space. The aware-ness of a “body schema” operating “below self-referential intentionality” as a preconscious, sub-personal process is a cognitive perspective supporting the thoughts of Merleau-Ponty. He claims that we do not perceive a neutral orthogonal space but inhabit spaces of meaning. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of depth is a charged intertwining of perceiver and perceived, a thickening of space springing from relationship. As the three following essays illustrate, the experience and expression of depth in a phenomenological context is a key concept for the creation of a perceptually responsive architecture that immerses the body in spatial depth.

It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. ... more It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. In this case, although the visual presentation will be degraded, the site should continue to be functional. We recommend using the ...

Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, 2014

In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and e... more In public transit, efficient movement and way finding are often at odds with human identity and environmental presence. Indeed, public transit often succeeds by transforming human beings into algorithms of movement and regarding their full humanity as a necessary sacrifice to efficiency. The design of transit environments often jettisons anything not instrumental to processing information about movement and orientation, including sensory engagement. Yet sensory engagement allows us to bond with a place and deepen our sense of orientation and safety.It is through the sensory capacities of our body that we get to know the world and make sense of it, according to French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who explores the links between perception and meaning at length.

Hypatia a Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Jun 16, 2011

This essay outlines how Western culture, and in particular the practice of architecture, has fail... more This essay outlines how Western culture, and in particular the practice of architecture, has failed to develop a nuanced and ethical approach to alterity. It examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty's conception of the flesh as a process of continual self-interrogation through perceptual acts that intertwine communality and difference, establishing a shared world through interlocution, and explores how the work of Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray augment each other to deepen our understanding of alterity. It then examines architectural design as an intercorporeal and intersubjective act that creatively refigures sedimented spatial and social habits. Using the example of an architectural design studio, it demonstrates how designers can critically confront nuances of alterity through investigating the corporeal and social depths of architecture.